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Thom is in the Times! Last week he was contacted by a reporter doing a piece on dudecheckthisout.com, “a new free service that allows users to collect and share links with just a few clicks,” and the article appears in today’s edition in the Technology section (“Online Diary,” under “Try This Link, Dude”). An excerpt follows, which I’ve annotated with the corresponding links to Thom’s pages (those weren’t provided in the online version of the article):

Thom Watson, a technology manager in Washington, is an experienced blogger who longed for a better way to keep track of notable sites. “I keep my blog mostly for personal thoughts,” he said. “I wanted a really easy way to collect links by topic and comment on them.”

Mr. Watson now maintains three MyBlog pages, on general topics, modern architecture, and the Toyota Prius. Better yet, the service sends him suggestions on sites of potential interest based on similarities between his postings and those on other MyBlogs. There’s even a social-networking aspect that links users based on their contact lists.

Cool! By the way, as Thom pointed out to me this morning, his “Sputnik” page, which covers retro, mid-20th-century design, is described in the piece as being on “modern architecture.” So okay, maybe “modern” when cast against the long march of history, yes. But not solely architecture.

Hm, I think I’ll go out and find a print copy of the Times right now. Shall I start a scrapbook?

When Sonal was here a couple of weeks ago, she mentioned that I should take advantage of my birthday’s proximity to Cinco de Mayo and have a multi-day flurry of celebration. (She then amended that and suggested I start earlier, on May Day.) Yours truly turns 27 this Saturday, ocho de mayo, as it were. (Thom’s and my first e-mails and blog comments to each other were from about this time last year; in fact, I think his first comment on my blog had to do with my birthday. You may now tilt your head and sigh a contented “aww.”) Well, I haven’t done anything celebratory yet–I think I’m finally getting over my sleep debt, exacerbated by the redeye flight earlier this week–but maybe we’ll go out for Mexican tonight. We’ll see. Mmm, margaritas.

While I was away last week, an unexpected package for me arrived from Amazon.com, and figuring it was a birthday present, I decided to hold off on opening it. The other day, though, the suspense was killing me, so I opened the box; it was from Cornelia! She made use of my wishlist and got me Tom Dolby‘s novel The Trouble Boy. I had put it on my wishlist after reading Jere‘s recommendation; I started reading it and it’s pretty good. (Even Rufus makes a cameo on page 16.) My only quibble? The book-jacket blurb is a little too comprehensive. I feel like it tells you too much, so when you reach the corresponding plot points, you’re all, “Ah yes, I knew this would happen.” Sort of like movie trailers that make you feel like you’ve seen the entire movie. Anyway, that’s negligible. Thanks again to Cornelia. She’s a doll.

Forget about lead in the drinking water. Or even the imminent plague of cicadas. IKEA infestations are reaching epidemic levels, reports the always insightful Onion. An excerpt:

“This epidemic of self-assembled, clean-lined modernist furniture is still largely contained to densely populated urban areas, but the danger exists that it will spread to other regions throughout America,” CIDC [(Center for Interior Design Control)] spokesman Chris Greeves said Tuesday. “At the rate it’s moving, our nation could suffer European levels of Scandinavian design within a decade.”

Greeves said IKEA is not easily controlled, as it spreads largely through word of mouth.

“It passes between rooms until it has infested not only your living room, but also your 1.5 bathrooms, your cleanly appointed kitchen, and then your entire sun-drenched, open-plan loft apartment. In the most extreme cases, it will even spread to the string-light-decorated rooftop patio overlooking your recently gentrified neighborhood.”

Heh. Are you a carrier? I can just see the opportunities: IKEA Walk (raise money to find a cure and save living rooms everywhere from this design-debilitating condition!), and ooh, can there be some sort of ribbon people can wear?

By way of disclaimer, this is all in good fun: I myself am guilty of spending inordinate amounts of time poring over the IKEA catalog. But I haven’t made a purchase. Yet.

At President Bush’s press conference last month, when he was asked to single out what he thought was his biggest mistake, I honestly pictured him saying, “Well, there’ve been so many mistakes, I don’t know where to start.” The Center for American Progress goes one better (actually, one hundred better) and lists “100 Mistakes for the President To Choose From” (link via Andy).

Another interesting bit from the Center for American Progress website, this time regarding the federal marriage amendment: “The Speech the President Should Have Given” by Mark David Agrast (Mar. 22, 2004). An excerpt:

I respect the personal convictions of those who support an amendment, and I personally share their discomfort about the prospect of same-sex marriages. I also support the right of religious denominations to define marriage for religious purposes, just as the states define marriage for civil purposes. But that right is not threatened. And as your president, I do not have the luxury of indulging my private feelings. I am the president of all the people, including our gay and lesbian fellow citizens. Laura and I have many friends–including prominent members of my administration–who have children and other family members who are gay or lesbian. They want the best for their children–as do we all. And I cannot find it within myself to say to them that the desire of their children to marry poses a threat to our society that it takes a constitutional amendment to avert.

Ah, if only.

BETHESDA, MD.–I’m back at the office. Le sigh. So, to recap the rest of my visit to the Bay Area: on Thursday night Subarna came up to the house, and she and I drove to the Castro to get a late dinner. As we parked on Hartford, it was kind of eerie: all the lights were out. The streetlamps were out, and there weren’t any lights on in the houses. And sure enough, when we got out and walked to our intended destination, the otherwise always open Baghdad Café, they told us they were closed due to a power outage. It was strange, because some places were affected and others not. Orphan Andy’s was up and running, so we went there for a yummy breakfast combo and much-needed coffee. Afterwards, we dropped by The Café. It was pretty empty, but there was a decent number of people on the dance floor. The music du jour seemed to be hip-hop, and I wasn’t really feeling it, so after our drinks and a smoke on the balcony, we left. Or rather, they were closing, so we had to leave. The Café may not be the most happening place, but I have a special place for it in my heart. It was one of the first clubs a friend took me to when I came out several years ago, and I’ve been known to drag my straight friends there, too. Low-key vibe, no cover, decent music: can’t really complain.

Most of Friday was spent relaxing at home. My mom had rented and recommended to me Intolerable Cruelty, the unfortunately titled Coen Brothers movie starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones. It’s a movie that looks great (really, George and Catherine are stunners) and has its moments. It was all right. Still in a movie state of mind, my parents, who have been meaning to get a DVD player, finally decided to go ahead and buy one. They got a basic Sony model from Circuit City, where I also bought Big Fish on DVD. We watched it that night (my second time). I figured it could be the player’s inaugural disc, and I’d take it back with me to keep afterwards.

Saturday night was my cousin’s 18th birthday party, a debut-like event at a nearby hotel. Honestly I didn’t think I’d have as much fun as I did. I saw a bunch of relatives I haven’t seen in a while, attempted to dodge the perennial girlfriend question (perhaps I’ll elaborate in a forthcoming entry), and later got down on the dance floor. I quickly found out that other than the basic back and forth, I had forgotten all my cha-cha moves, if I knew any to begin with. But it was cool; part of the fun is watching other couples and trying to pick up new steps.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day in San Francisco. My parents, my aunt, and I drove into the City, and spent some time strolling in and around Union Square. There was an art fair going on in the square, with lots of really good photography and paintings. We went up into Macy’s, mostly for the floor-to-ceiling views of the square below, and found ourselves in the luggage department, where–you know I love bags–I got a great deal on a Kenneth Cole Reaction duffel bag, courtesy of Mom and Dad. (Shopping with parents can be a drag, but when they’re paying, who am I to resist? So “they got a great deal,” I should say.) On the way to a quick snack at the San Francisco Centre, I stopped at a discount bookstore on Market (near Grant), and picked up a few books:

• Back Then: Two Literary Lives in 1950s New York by Anne Bernays and Justin Kaplan
• Open Secret: Gay Hollywood, 1928-2000 by David Ehrenstein
• The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman (translated by Anthea Bell)

Back at the house, as I did some last-minute computing before leaving for the airport, I found yet another worm on my parents’ computer. The previous one kept shutting down and restarting the computer, while this one modified the hosts file specifically to block access to a long list of popular antivirus websites. So until I figured that out, I couldn’t even get the virus information and definitions I needed. Tricksy wormses!

Anyway, I’m back on the east coast. Thankfully I got some sleep on the plane, making this one of my least painful redeye experiences. And taking a direct flight to Dulles helped, versus having to connect, which I’ve usually done when flying cross-country. After collecting my lovely new bag from baggage claim–it came through unscathed–I took a shuttle van and arrived at the condo around 8:30 this morning, missing Thom by mere minutes after he left for work. I’ll see him tonight. I can’t wait!

How cute am I? I’ve been playing around with Yahoo! Avatars (as of now, it works on IE5+ only), via Ernie, who developed the site.

This rendering isn’t far off, actually. Okay, I don’t own a pair of ripped jeans and my hair is currently a lot longer, but I admit it: I have a big head. I’ve always known this, but it was made biometrically clear a few months ago. Thom and I were browsing for frames at the eyewear store, and a salesman came over and offered to measure each of us so we could know which frames were likely to fit us, using the number noted on a sticker on the lenses. The salesman brought out something approximating a slide rule, measured the width of Thom’s head, and said, “You’re like, an eight or nine.” Then it was my turn, and it turns out I’m an “eleven or twelve.” Gee.

Anyway, the avatar maker is kind of fun, though still limited; it’s a beta after all. When used with Yahoo! Messenger, the avatar conveys your mood according to the emoticons you use, which is cool. It has a sad face, a happy face, an angry face (though I think the overall cuteness mitigates it: “Look, it’s all, ‘Grr!’ How cute!”), etc. When I instant message, I mostly use AIM, so the IM aspect of this avatar isn’t so practical for me. I just like playing dress-up.

Grr. Last night I noticed that my parents’ computer (using Windows XP) was running really slow, so I went to the Task Manager, which showed that CPU usage was at 100%. Yikes. And then today, I was getting dialog boxes that would give me a minute to save data (gee, thanks) before the computer would shut down and restart automatically. Well, after some internet searching, I narrowed it down to something called the Sasser worm:

If your computer is infected with W32.Sasser.worm, you may see a dialog box with text that refers to LSASS.exe. Some customers whose computers have been infected may not notice the presence of the worm at all, while others who are not infected may experience problems because the worm is attempting to attack their computer. Typical symptoms may include systems rebooting every few minutes without user input.

I followed their instructions, and everything seems fine… for now. We hates the nasty wormses.

For Poem on Your Blog Day (via Terrance), I’ll go with one of my favorites, “The Hug,” which I’ve posted here before, so some of you readers may remember it. I revisit it now in honor of its author, Thom Gunn (1929-2004), who passed away last weekend in San Francisco. From the Times:

Acclaimed as one of the most promising young poets of postwar Britain, Mr. Gunn found his own voice after he migrated to California in the 1950s and established himself in San Francisco, his home for the rest of his life. There, he wedded traditional form to unorthodox themes like LSD, panhandling, and homosexuality. He experimented with free verse and syllabic stanzas. In doing so he evolved from British tradition and European existentialism to embrace the relaxed ways of the California counterculture.

And now, “The Hug”:

It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
  Half of the night with our old friend
    Who’d showed us in the end
  To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
    Already I lay snug,
And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,
    Suddenly, from behind,
In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:
    Your instep to my heel,
  My shoulder-blades against your chest.
  It was not sex, but I could feel
  The whole strength of your body set,
      Or braced, to mine,
    And locking me to you
  As if we were still twenty-two
  When our grand passion had not yet
    Become familial.
  My quick sleep had deleted all
  Of intervening time and place.
    I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.